


Bargains

by Gwen77 (orphan_account)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Regency, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-10-24 23:57:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 18,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10752438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Gwen77
Summary: Yet another arranged marriage AU, this time set in a quasi-Regency Westeros.





	1. Chapter 1

The Tarth girl was hideous. He had been told, of course, that she was no beauty but he had assumed that this meant she would be inoffensively plain, with dull features and a moderately unattractive figure. He had not remotely expected this giant strange creature, with her tremendous breadth of shoulder and flatness of chest, freckled and large-lipped and strangely proportioned. 

Cersei caught his eye and he bit his lip to keep from returning her incredulous smile. His father must have been far angrier than he had shown, Jaime thought, for _this_ to be the suitable bride he dredged up for his eldest son. He looked at his father and Tywin looked coolly back, his face bland and unreadable. The Tarth girl was sitting very still, her hands in her lap, letting herself be looked at. Flags of red showed raw on her cheekbones, two patches of colour that were too crude to warrant the term _blush_. But she didn't fidget under their united stare, and her large hands lay perfectly still in her lap. 

"So," Tyrion said after the uncomfortable silence had dragged on another minute. "You're to be my new sister-in-law."

She looked up and Jaime felt his breath catch unexpectedly in his throat. Her eyes were truly remarkable - large and brilliant, blue as the ocean, and somehow alarming, overwhelming, even though she was looking at Tyrion and not at him. He felt a sudden desire to avoid her direct gaze.

"I don't know," she said, in a calm dispassionate voice. "That is your decision to make." She looked at Jaime and he felt a momentary absurd urge to step backwards, away, out of the line of her sight. "If you wish it, I will marry you."

"Why?" Cersei asked. There was a new edge to her voice and the amusement in her was gone. She disliked those eyes as much as Jaime did, that was clear. "Are you so desperate?"

"Yes," the girl said baldly, but Tywin interrupted.

"Nonsense," he said. "It's a very respectable alliance. On both sides. Your uncle tells me that you have refused several eligible offers."

"Yes," she said in that heavy flat voice. "That was when my father was alive."

A pause. She seemed to think she had said all that was necessary. Her gaze returned to Jaime and he felt a shudder of revulsion that startled him a little. She wasn't _that_ ugly but somehow her gaze was unendurable. He couldn't stand it.

"Father," he said. "You can't - I refuse. I will not marry this - this woman." He heard the derisive note in his voice as he said the last word, saw Tyrion glance at him with a faint frown and Cersei's half-smile. The girl herself did not flinch or scowl. She stood up.

"I'll tell my uncle," she said. "Thank you for your time." 

"Wait," Tywin said swiftly. "It's not his decision to make. It's mine. And I've formed -" his eyes ran over her slowly, seeing who knew what - "a favourable impression. A very favourable impression. I should like you to join our family." 

"It is his decision," the girl said solidly. "Naturally I refuse." 

"Don't be hasty," Tywin said. "Jaime's an impulsive young man. He'll come to see-"

"No," she said and a startled silence fell. Jaime couldn't remember the last time anyone had interrupted his father, let alone contradicted him. "My uncle told me this was a practical matter, a bargain. I'm willing enough to enter such a bargain. But you-" she glanced at each of them in turn, those startling eyes like the sudden flare of a blinding light into each face. "I don't know what this is, but I won't be party to it."

"What about your estates, then?" Jaime said, impelled by sudden curiosity. He couldn't stop staring at her. He'd never seen such an oddity of a person. "Do you have another suitor to rescue the place?"

"No," she said after a short pause, curtly. "That isn't your concern."

"It could be," Jaime said. Cersei was staring at him now but they had agreed he would agree to a marriage if the girl wasn't intolerable - and hideous as she was, disconcerting as she was, he thought he could tolerate her. He felt oddly inclined to laugh in the face of her level stare and heavy frown.

"I've changed my mind," he said to his father, still watching her. "I'll marry her."

"Why?" she demanded, the frown between her brows deepening ferociously. She was only nineteen or twenty, his father had said, but her severe strength seemed to belong to a much older woman. She had been a governess somewhere, he recalled, before her uncle had brought her home, and he felt a momentary amused pity for the children. "You said you didn't wish to."

"I changed my mind," he said again, and grinned, seeing a flicker of startlement in her eyes. "I like you."

She flinched, then, as if he'd hit her, and he saw that she really was nineteen; despite her armoured air, she had the thin skin of the young. She'd thought he was mocking her.

"You seem," he said, trying to explain what he hardly understood himself. "Sensible. Honest. I like," he saw Cersei's eyebrows rise and felt momentarily trapped. He wanted to reassure the girl but he didn't want to offend Cersei - she could be touchy about the oddest things, even though this creature was the last person he could imagine rousing her jealousy. "I've changed my mind." 

She hesitated, still standing, and it was Tyrion who went up to her and took her hand and smiled and talked and somehow made it all right. And that was that. He was marrying a woman the size of an ox who seemed to have about the same amount of belligerence and Cersei was marrying Robert Sodding Baratheon and there was nothing either of them could do about it, in the face of their father's icy determination and his control of the purse-strings. _Respectable alliances_ , he had said, glaring at them in distaste, and Jaime had known he meant only to provide a disguise, a screen, for the scandal in his family he had finally deigned to notice but he was still faintly surprised that Cersei got a Baratheon and he himself was to be handed over to the bankrupt heiress of a moderately well-known family. He ran his fingers through Cersei's hair that night, thinking it over, as she lay sleeping in his arms. The Tarth blood was impeccable, of course, and Tywin cared about blood but he cared about money and appearances too and Brienne Tarth could hardly deliver either. He could only assume that his father blamed him for the whole affair, more than he blamed Cersei, and he'd chosen this as a punishment as well as a disguise.

Ah well. The Tarth girl had very little idea what she was marrying into, but then nor had he and perhaps the money would make up for it. He remembered her face again, the vivid blue of her eyes and her pale freckled skin, mottled red with anger or embarrassment or some other emotion. He tried to imagine placating that creature with money and grinned ruefully to himself. Hardly. No. He'd have to find some other way to make the marriage tolerable. Then Cersei stirred, woke, and he forgot about the girl and the marriage and everything except the silky warmth of her skin and the sly laughter in her eyes. There would be a way to make it work, he thought hazily. He and Cersei would manage it. They could manage anything together, anyone. Robert Baratheon was a moron and the Tarth girl was no one in particular. They would find a way. 


	2. Chapter 2

It was a short engagement. The Tarth creditors had been satisfied, for the moment, by the mere announcement that the Lannister money would be coming into the family but the uncle was nevertheless in a hurry. Jaime suspected he feared allowing him time to change his mind and couldn't quite blame him. Miss Tarth came as a shock each time he saw her. She was just so _large_. He knew he was staring, knew she saw him do it by the blotching of her complexion, but he couldn't stop himself. He couldn't get used to her, to the incongruity of her big hands fumbling among the delicate tea things, to her enormous raw knuckles as she handed him his cup. Those eyes.

"I have to ask you a question," she said to him one afternoon. They were alone in her uncle's townhouse, in his large but faintly shabby apartments, and had been sitting in almost total silence for nearly ten minutes. He looked at her expectantly but she didn't speak, turning uncharacteristically hesitant, opening her mouth and then shutting it again. 

"What is it?" he said after a few moments, aware of the note of impatience in his voice and not troubling to suppress it. She may as well enter the marriage with as few illusions about him as possible. 

"I should like to have children," she said in a hurried voice but keeping her eyes to his face with what looked like an effort. "Will that be - do you think -" She stopped then, flushing redder than ever and turning her eyes away, and he was reminded again how young she really was. She so plainly expected him to be repulsed by the thought, and to tell her so, that he felt an odd catch of something like tenderness in his chest. The marriage was a joke, of course, and Cersei would laugh at his scruples, but there was no reason to gratuitously wound the girl.

"I don't see why not," he said and she exhaled and nodded stiffly, looking unconvinced. He studied her dispassionately for a few moments, trying to imagine touching her, fucking her. It felt wrong, viscerally wrong, but that would have been so with any woman but Cersei. It didn't feel impossible, however. He imagined what the absurd little peaks of her breasts might be like, bare, how those eyes of hers might change when he palmed them, and his body stirred obediently to the idea without any difficulty. 

"At least Robert is handsome," Cersei said to him, later. She smiled and put her cool hand on his jaw, as it clenched. "Not that I - you know I don't want anyone else. But if we must marry, well. At least Robert is _normal_. What does father imagine you could do with that beast of a creature?"

Jaime grimaced, and tugged her down into his lap. Since the catastrophe, they had given up on their usual feverish secrecy - merely waiting until the servants were out of the room - and Tywin now looked at them with cold dislike but made no more threats to separate them. He was satisfied, Jaime supposed, by their meek consent to respectable alliances and trusted to time to do the rest. He had no idea how impossible it would be to truly separate them. Jaime kissed Cersei's neck, thinking how little anyone understood them - even Tyrion, blinded by his long feud with Cersei, thought that Jaime would someday outgrow her - outgrow breathing, outgrow his need for water - Cersei arched against him and he stopped thinking, pressing his face blindly into the familiar silk of her hair. 

What was he to do, he thought later, watching her pull down her skirts and smile at him over her shoulder, with _any_ other woman? _That beast of a creature,_ Cersei had said. He remembered his brief fantasy of touching Brienne Tarth and it seemed absurd, obscene, after Cersei's touch and with the smell of her perfume still lingering in the air, dizzying. Perhaps he could - but she wanted children, badly enough to humiliate herself by telling him so - and he could surely shut his eyes and deal with her, somehow, when the time came.

It wasn't, in the end, very difficult. He let her put out the candles and let her keep her nightgown on and her strange body, with its odd soft patches and its hard muscles, was pleasant enough in the dark. She was silent and awkward and too compliant and made a single stifled noise that sounded like pain, the first time, but he even gave her some pleasure in the end, he thought, and that was really the best he could hope for with any woman but Cersei.

"Are you all right?" he said to her, afterwards, hearing her strive to control her breathing in the darkness and felt her nod against his shoulder.

"Yes," she said and then, after a few more minutes of effort, in a quieter voice, "Thank you."

"Entirely my pleasure," he said and she was still lying close enough to him that he felt her flinch. He turned towards her, wishing for a little light at least.

"What," he said. He put his hand out blindly and touched what turned out to be her arm, astonishingly soft skin over hard muscle. "You don't believe me?"

There was a long moment of silence in the dark. He stroked up her arm, touched her shoulder and her clavicle and the long line of her throat. A woman other than Cersei. It still felt strange, wrong, but he couldn't deny there was a certain pleasure in it. He put his mouth on her throat and felt her shiver.

"Tell me," he said and felt the strong clasp of her hand in his hair as she arched up clumsily under his touch. She didn't answer, and he lost sight of the question for the rest of the surprisingly pleasant night. 

At breakfast the next morning, she had a towering pile of letters. Tywin was looking at them both keenly but Brienne didn't appear to notice, absorbed in her correspondence. The heavy frown was back between her brows.

"Not bad news, I hope?" Jaime said and she glanced up at him and set the letter aside.

"I apologise," she said. "Only a matter of business."

"Business?" Tywin said, leaning forward a little to study her.

"Yes," she said. "My - one of our tenants, on Tarth. The new steward seems to have no notion of his duty."

She said _duty_ with a firm unironic emphasis that made Tyrion and Jaime smile at each other but Tywin, of course, was pleased. He liked the dutiful, so far as they went. And her fondness for the land would do her no harm. Tywin had never succeeded in getting either of his sons to pay the least attention to the Lannister estates. He got her to tell him about the whole affair of the tenant and the steward - an interminable story of rents and hardships and leaking roofs - while Jaime dipped his toast in tea and thought achingly of Cersei in Baratheon's house this morning, thought of her breakfasting with all those damned Baratheon brothers and their tedious wives when she could have been here, with him, sharing a smile with him across the table at their father's pompous pleasure in this dull, heavy, humourless creature. 

Brienne caught his eye just then and he felt a momentary compunction. It wasn't her fault that she wasn't Cersei, after all. He put his hand on hers as compensation, a little clumsily, and she looked hastily away, colour rising in a warm tide up her throat and her sentence coming to an abrupt end. Tywin's smile was all satisfaction as he glanced from her to Jaime and Jaime smiled back at him, as widely as he could, wondering when it would be polite to take his hand back and how he could next get away and contrive a moment with Cersei.


	3. Chapter 3

There was something strangely uncomfortable about sleeping with two women, Jaime found, though Cersei didn't seem to feel any qualms about keeping Robert satisfied while she gave herself to Jaime. She hated it, she said calmly, but they had to be practical and he had to agree when he was with her. It _was_ the only practical thing to do. What else could they do? Give each other up? Tell the impossible truth to their two impossible spouses? When he was with Cersei, Jaime was quite sure that being with her in secret was the only imaginable thing to do and his own discomfort about Brienne subsided to a vague unease at the back of his mind. But when he was alone - or, worse, with Brienne - it became so intense that it was almost a physical queasiness. 

He just didn't care for the role he had been thrust into, that was all. He _had_ to touch Brienne and play the courteous husband and sleep with her from time to time, his father expected it and he knew that he would have no peace until she had delivered an heir, but the discomfort of it only grew with every passing night. He felt _guilty_ , a bizarre and unfamiliar emotion that he utterly detested. He had always prided himself on his unconcern for other people's rules, for his - and Cersei's - determination to have what they wanted and to ignore the rest of the world with its stupid cant about duty and self-restraint and every other kind of nonsensical lie that people told themselves as compensation for their cowardice. But this, he found, he couldn't ignore. When Brienne's solemnities made him laugh, when she told him earnestly about some Lannister tenant who was in ludicrously dire straits and he agreed to look into the matter and saw the shy-pleased smile that she tried to hide at the corner of her mouth, he felt that his amused pleasure was a betrayal of Cersei. When he lay in Cersei's bed and told her about Brienne's clumsy failures in society, told how the girl had broken a vase at the Tyrell's squeeze and stammered her apologies at unnecessary length - he loved the rich delicious trill of Cersei's laugh, the way her eyes gleamed in delight as he mimicked the stutter, but he felt the same queasy turn in his stomach then too. 

"About Robert," he said to her once, watching her gather up her hair into a rich coil after an assignation in the little house he had rented for the purpose. "Do you think he - do you feel-" he couldn't say the word _guilty_ to Cersei. "What if he finds out?"

"He won't," Cersei said serenely, pinning the coil in place and smiling faintly at her own reflection. "He's as stupid as your ox." 

"She isn't stupid, precisely," Jaime said and could have bitten his tongue at the look she darted him. He smiled and sat up in the bed.

"Jealous?" he asked, making it a joke, and she narrowed her eyes at him in answer and then turned back to the mirror and smiled again at the sight of her reflection.

"You're the vainest creature alive, sweet sister," he told her, grinning helplessly - Seven, he loved her - and she laughed.

"Not so vain as you're becoming," she said lightly. "I suppose that creature worships you."

"Does Robert worship you?" he asked idly and saw the faint change in her face, the slightest hint of a freeze. He wanted to put out his hand to her but restrained himself, knowing she would hate him to have seen the weakness in that momentary look of distress.

"No," she said after a moment, in a would-be light tone. "He still hankers after his insipid dead love. One of the Stark girls, of all people. She died at seventeen and he's been heartbroken ever since."

"What a maudlin fool," Jaime said lightly, careful to keep any hint of sympathy out of his face and voice. Poor Cersei hated to be cut out by anyone, even a dead girl, even in the eyes of a man she barely cared for, but she hated sympathy more. She turned swiftly and bent to kiss him, fiercely, longingly, and he put his hands in her hair and ruined the pretty coil of it and so they were both two hours later than they meant to be when they finally hurried from the house and went their separate ways.

"Am I dreadfully late?" he said pleasantly, as he came into the sitting room and found Brienne in stiff conversation with Tyrion and his father with his watch in his hand. "You shouldn't have waited dinner for me. You know what Bolton is."

"Your wife insisted," Tywin said sourly, nodding to a footman. " _I_ certainly would not have delayed dinner for you. Brienne, my dear, will you allow me to lead you in? Jaime may follow with his brother."

Jaime quirked his eyebrows at Tyrion, who smiled sardonically - knowingly, damn him - back. Then he met Brienne's eyes and felt the ugly twist at the bottom of his stomach again. He didn't wish to be entangled with her but how could he help it when he had been made to marry her and she did such a poor job of concealing her pleasure at the sight of him? He smiled politely at her, holding the door open for her and his father to precede him into the dining room, and decided that he would not go to her tonight. He was entitled to one night of peace, free from this mess of conflicting loyalties. If only he could learn to dislike Brienne, or at least to care nothing for her. But somehow, for no earthly reason he could see, she inspired an absurd fondness in him and that made everything impossible. 

She glanced over her shoulder at him as she passed, a little uncertainly, and something about the look and the turn of the throat, the little flush he could see at the back of her neck, sparked a sudden irritating flare of desire for her in him. _Damn the creature_ , he thought viciously, and left a candle burning in their room that night so that he could at least see her blinded, astonished look as she clutched at his shoulders and called out his name. She was shy afterwards, as usual, pulling her voluminous nightgown down with trembling hands and avoiding his eye but he'd given her pleasure anyhow and surely that was something, some compensation, the best he could do for her. The best he could do in the circumstances.

"Are you," Brienne said hesitatingly, and paused. "Is everything - well with you?"

"Of course," he said lightly. "Why shouldn't it be?"

She said no more, though she still looked at him with her big troubled blue eyes - _cow eyes_ , Cersei's voice said in his head and made him flinch. She saw the flinch and her mouth tightened a little and she turned away. She always interpreted every such thing as disgust at her appearance, he knew wearily, and so he pressed close to her, kissed her forehead and her cheek and found the best lie he could to explain his preoccupation and smooth out the line between her brows. It was all such a lot of work, he thought tiredly, and put his forehead in the comforting warmth of her shoulder and then fell, abruptly and thankfully, into a deep sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Cersei was pregnant. She wrote to him of it and although her letter contained no hint of feeling - it was a curt unrevealing note, meant for his father's eyes - he knew at once, somehow, with a sickened sense of guilt and triumph, that the child was his. He handed the letter to his father, wordlessly, and then looked at Brienne who was sombrely eating her toast, her eyes downcast.

For a moment, as he was still thinking of Cersei's smoothly rounded body, Brienne's enormous ugliness struck him forcibly - her angularity, her oddity, the sheer scale of her. The contrast was so incongruous that it made him think suddenly of a possible appalling resemblance: what if he had simultaneously fathered children on both of them? Cersei's children, the product of his love, the passion that dominated his life, would be strangers: his nephews and nieces, not sharing his name, kept ignorant of their origin for their own protection. Whereas anything that came of this strange coupling with this odd creature would be his legitimate child in the eyes of the world. He wasn't sure if he wanted to laugh or scream. It was so foolishly unfair.

"Thank you," Tywin said, handing back the letter. "That is good news indeed. I must congratulate Baratheon."

Tyrion looked up swiftly.

"What?" he said and Jaime gave him the note. Brienne looked up too, gave Jaime an inquiring look, and he felt the familiar ache in his chest as all his thoughts turned over and she became ridiculously dear once again. He smiled at her.

"My sister," he said, vaguely pleased with himself for the calm ease of his voice. "She's increasing."

"Oh," Brienne said. "I - congratulations." She looked from Tywin's stiff face to Tyrion's and then back to Jaime. A little crease appeared between her brows. 

"Are you very anxious for her?" she asked and Tyrion rose abruptly from the table and excused himself.

"Quite anxious," Tywin said smoothly. "You see, her mother-"

Brienne's brows drew together again in sympathy, and she nodded so earnestly, as Tywin talked glibly on about his only daughter and the delicacy of her constitution, that Jaime felt his teeth grind. It was too much. He rose too.

"Brienne," he said, interrupting his father and ignoring the icy look of surprise he got for it. "I want a word in private, if you please."

She rose obediently, but Tywin's hand on her wrist arrested her.

"What nonsense, Jaime," he said. "At this hour in the morning? You have an engagement to ride in the park, I know, and I particularly wished to consult Brienne on a matter of some-"

"It can't wait," Jaime interrupted again, recklessly, astonished by how easy it was. "Brienne."

She looked puzzled but she took her wrist gently from Tywin's grip. 

"I will come to you in the study, my lord," she said to him. "After I've spoken to Ser - to Jaime." He'd asked to call him by his name but she often forgot. He felt a stupid pang over that, of all things, but it didn't matter now. He couldn't go on with the lie another instant. It was too intolerable.

"What is it?" she said, once they were in their private sitting-room, and he gestured to her to sit down. His heart was pounding wildly, recklessly, and there was a babble of voices in his mind - his father's, Cersei's, Tyrion's - but he ignored them. Enough was enough.

"I have something to tell you," he said. "You won't like it but I must ask you to be calm, Brienne. I haven't liked deceiving you but it's been - it felt necessary."

She was still as stone then, watching him, her eyes very clear and steady. Waiting with grim patience for some sort of blow; he was reminded, with another queer pang, of the stolid expression she had worn the first time he met her, when she had been waiting for the Lannisters to reject her. Was there some tactful way to put the thing, some way to soften it? No. It was best to be blunt.

"This child," he said baldly. "Cersei's child. It's mine."

She blinked. Once.

"I don't understand," she said in her slow voice and he felt his face twist in a sneer before he could help it. 

"You do know how children are made," he said. There was a jeering unpleasant note in his voice that he hadn't intended - he'd meant to be as kind as possible in doing this - but he was suddenly furiously angry and he couldn't control his tone any more. It was partly anger with her for her slowness, her stupid trust in him, but chiefly it was rage at the whole situation, his father's bullying, the idiot ill-luck that made Cersei, the one woman in the world he wanted, the one woman he couldn't have. And meanwhile _this_ woman sat there, staring at him with her impossible eyes and her whitening face, as if it was his doing, his fault.

"I'm sorry," he said into the silence, impelled. "Cersei and I - we've loved each other since we were children. My father found out. He arranged marriages to separate us."

"Your _sister_?" she said incredulously and then stopped. Her eyes were wide, amazed, but she didn't seemed inclined to cry or scream or throw things. He waited. Her hands moved on her knees, once, and then she clasped them in her lap.

"You should have told me," she said at last. "Before. Before we married."

"I know," he said, and sat down opposite her, feeling suddenly limp and sick, all the anger draining out of him. "I was. I couldn't. My father - I was afraid."

He had never admitted to anyone, before, that he was afraid of anything. It would not have occurred to him to see himself as afraid. Trapped, constrained, angry, desperate - but not afraid. She sat looking at him and he said, again, in a wrenched voice that he hardly recognised, "I _am_ sorry."

"Yes," she said in a thin voice. "I see that." She shook herself a little and her voice strengthened. "I - what can we do? You can't - even if you divorced me, you could hardly marry her."

"Of course not," he said and stared at her, baffled. "There's nothing to be done. I wished you to know."

"Now I know," she said, a peculiar smile passing over her mouth for a moment, turning it awry. "I thought - I mean, I wondered. If there was someone. I hadn't thought of your sister."

There seemed to be nothing more to say. They sat in silence for a few moments more. Her expression was oddly remote, absent, her eyes seeming to look through him rather than at him.

"I thought you would be angrier," he said at last and she shook her head.

"No," she said uncommunicatively, and stood up. "I will go to your father now." She paused to look back at him when she reached the door and a little colour came into her face. "You won't - I must ask you not to touch me again. I can remain here as your wife, for the moment, but not - not like that."

He nodded dumbly, and listened to the click as the door opened and closed and to the sound of her skirts and her heavy step as she walked down the corridor. After what felt like a long time, or perhaps no time at all, the door opened and Tyrion came in.

"Well?" he said and then met Jaime's eyes. His eyebrows shot up. "What on earth have you done?"

"I told her," Jaime said numbly.

"You told her," Tyrion repeated and came all the way into the room, sat down next to Jaime. "And what did she say?"

Jaime tried to clear his head. She had said something so absurd that he still couldn't quite take it in. What had she meant by it?

"What can we do?" he quoted. "Even if you divorced me, you could hardly marry her."

Tyrion made an odd sound, something between a gasp and a laugh.

"Well," he said. "That's practical, anyway. Will she leave, do you think?"

"I don't know," he said. "She said something about remaining for the moment. If I don't." He felt himself flush unexpectedly. "Touch her."

"Mm," Tyrion said, looking at him consideringly. "Very reasonable terms. Father will be upset about his heir, though." 

"I don't give a damn about that," Jaime said with a sudden vehemence that startled him. "Father can - I don't care what he wants."

"You don't?" Tyrion asked, and Jaime met his eyes and nodded. 

"What will you do then?" Tyrion inquired, sounding honestly curious, and Jaime shook his head.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't - I must see Cersei."

"Of course," Tyrion said sardonically and Jaime wanted to glare at him but found he was too tired. He wanted to see Cersei - more, to touch her, surround himself with her soft perfumed loveliness, put his face in her lap and close his eyes and rest - but it was Brienne's face that was clearest in his mind's eye now, vivid and bright-eyed and strangely compelling in all its plainness. The thought of never again touching her was oddly painful, creating a dull ache that even imagining Cersei's warm touch couldn't soothe away. He had become used to her, that was all. He liked her. He was sorry he had hurt her. Vague, unsatisfactory, half-real feelings; they would pass, once he had the real Cersei in his arms again and saw himself reflected in her eyes. No one else mattered. That was the whole point.


	5. Chapter 5

Cersei glowed in her pregnancy. She was so dazzlingly lovely, triumphant and happy, that Jaime couldn't take his eyes off her. He was vaguely aware that he _ought_ to - his father was glowering at him and even Robert Baratheon might just have the intelligence to notice the look on his brother-in-law's face - but she was so, so lovely that he felt reckless about them all. It was his child that she carried. It was their love that had put that glinting delight in her eyes. What else mattered? Cersei frowned at him faintly, shook her head, and that made him reluctantly turn his eyes elsewhere. As he did so, he saw that Brienne, too, was looking at Cersei and the look in her face made his stomach clench unpleasantly. She ought not to be so transparent. It was hard to know precisely what she was feeling but it was obvious to any observer that she was in the grip of _some_ strong emotion. Envy? Disgust? If anyone else had chanced to look at her, they would have been startled into suspicion that something was amiss, though they could hardly have guessed what.

He reached out and touched her arm gently, warningly, and her eyes shifted to his face. He flinched involuntarily at the expression in them. Misery? Anger? Contempt? He wished he knew her better. She had no notion how to guard her face, but he had no notion how to interpret it either. 

"Come into the gardens," he said. "This room is a touch overheated, I think."

She took his arm silently and let him lead her into Baratheon's gardens. It was twilight, the air cool and sweet with the smell of summer, a few early stars piercing the soft sky. Brienne's alarming tension eased a little as he took her down the small winding path that led to the lake. She was still breathing a little too quickly, he noticed, striving hard for control.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I know our situation is uncomfortable in the extreme."

"Yes," she said, looking at the lake and taking her arm out of his. Her breathing eased a little more. "I think I should go away. Lady Catelyn wishes for me to go with her into Essos in July. I think I shall accept."

"Go away?" he said, startled. "For how long?"

"Three months," she said in her slow even voice. "In Essos, I mean. After that, I don't know. I shall have to think."

"Do you mean," he said and paused. He felt oddly shaken, disoriented. "You mean you will leave me."

"I think so," Brienne said, her eyes still on the water. "I don't think-" she looked at him and he flinched back, again, from the clarity of her gaze. "It is an impossible situation. I don't think I should stay."

"My father wouldn't permit it," he pointed out and she looked faintly surprised. 

"I hadn't intended to ask his permission," she said, an unexpected dryness coming into her voice. "It is your business and mine, not his."

"Does that mean you're asking my permission?" he asked. A frown came between her brows.

"You're my husband," she said after a moment. "I took vows to you. I won't go if you object." She looked at him searchingly. "Do you think you have a right to object?"

"No," he said, after a moment. "No, I don't."

She gave him a look that was almost a smile, almost warm with approval, and he felt himself flush for no reason. Why on earth should he care for her approval? He tried to understand his own unease with her idea. What would his father say? He would be furious at Jaime for driving her away, for creating a new scandal. Yes, that was part of his anxiety. But he also felt something like worry at the mere idea of Brienne simply vanishing into the world, with no idea where she was going or how she would live.

"Where will you go?" he asked. "What will you do for money?"

"Your father made a generous settlement on us," she said. "He can withhold some of the income from me, but not all. And Tarth will begin to pay its own way within the year. I shall have enough."

"Enough for what?" he demanded. "You can't mean to - surely you have some plan, Brienne. Somewhere to go. Some relatives, perhaps?"

"I shall go to Essos with Lady Catelyn," she repeated. "For three months. I can think what to do then. Where to go next." A faint smile passed over her mouth. "Certainly not to any relatives."

He couldn't help smiling back. She was so astonishing. He couldn't imagine any other woman of his acquaintance even contemplating such a plan. Would Cersei simply stride out of her life so, with nothing, fearless? No. He and Cersei had always bargained with life, negotiating between fear and desire, family and freedom. Brienne was nothing like them.

She must have seen the admiration in his eyes as he looked at her, for her calm steadiness faltered; her colour mounted and she looked away, back towards the house.

"We - we should return to the party," she said hastily, and the hint of a stammer in her voice was enough to set off an ill-timed conflagration of desire in him that he almost couldn't contain. He wanted her. Not like he wanted Cersei, of course, he didn't _need_ Brienne as he needed Cersei, but he couldn't deny the intensity of his fascination with her. He was struck by a sudden flash of memory of the last time he had been allowed to touch her - she had turned her face away, into the pillow, and there had been a stain of colour that extended to the tips of her small breasts - and gritted his teeth. It was absurd, insulting, to believe he could have both her and Cersei. And of course, put like that, there was no choice at all. The only thing to do was to let her go. 

"Back to the party," he agreed and offered her his arm again.

When they returned, he saw that Cersei had been watching for them; her eyes flicked swiftly over his face and went to Brienne's, and her mouth curled a little contemptuously. Brienne went stiff beside him. Damn. He frowned a warning at Cersei and Tyrion saw it at once and cast a swift inquisitive glance at him. His father was watching, too, his face grim. Jaime felt the room close around him with claustrophobic intensity. He took Brienne over to the Tyrells, for a little camouflage from the eyes of his family - useless, of course, but at least it was a distraction - and let himself be amused by her appallingly awkward attempts to make polite conversation with Margaery Tyrell.

What if he could go away with her to Essos? If it could be the two of them who left every familiar face behind and walked off into the unknown? It was impossible, of course, and not even what he wanted, but the momentary fantasy was unexpectedly pleasant. It was astonishing that, of all the women his father could have chosen for him, he had lighted on the only one who - unlikely as it seemed - could make the idea of distance from Cersei seem even faintly appealing. The disloyalty of that thought made him glance across the room, looking for Cersei; his eyes found her shining golden head, turned away from him to speak to her husband, and he felt a familiar lurch of fury and desire and unsatisfied longing that was almost reassuring. He could never openly have her, but at least he knew he would always, always want her. As long as that was true, he could do without anything or anyone else.


	6. Chapter 6

Tywin, of course, was furious. He began with courteous objections, with concern for Brienne's safety, with how much he had valued her help with the estates and her delightful presence in his home. Then he began to talk, with increasing coldness and acidity, about duty.

"I need hardly remind you, I think," he said, "that you took vows. How do you imagine you will fulfil them in Essos?"

"That is none of your business," Brienne said. Jaime saw Tyrion's eyebrows shoot up and had to suppress an ill-timed grin of his own. "Ser Jaime and I have discussed it. I have his consent."

Tywin's glare snapped to Jaime and he almost flinched from it.

"You agreed to this escapade?" he demanded. 

"I did," Jaime said, secretly amazed at the calm nonchalance his voice had assumed. "I thought it would do Brienne good. She likes Lady Catelyn and she's never been to Essos."

"Go with her then," Tywin snapped. "I've no objection. What I object to-"

"You should not have made Ser Jaime marry me, my lord," Brienne said, and a shocked silence fell. Even Tywin was momentarily silenced. His expression, as he looked at Jaime, became murderous.

"You _told_ her?" he said and then recovered himself a little. "What have you told her? My dear, I assure you, I haven't forced Jaime to anything. He was a little reluctant to settle down as first, as so many young men are, but that changed as soon as he met you."

Brienne didn't flinch but something in her face changed, crumbled a little, at least to Jaime's eye. He put his hand on hers.

"That part is true," he told her. "You know that. I chose you."

"Thank you," Brienne said after a moment, and withdrew her hand. "I meant that you didn't wish to marry at all. It was wrong to make you do so."

Tywin's face was white, now, with his fury. 

"Do you know why I insisted they marry?" he said in a low dangerous voice, quite unlike the unctuous tone he usually put on for Brienne, and she nodded. 

"Yes," she said softly and Tywin made a noise of disgust and rose from the table.

"I wash my hands of both of you," he said. "You have as little respect for the common decencies as Jaime does, it seems."

Brienne glanced at Jaime and the corner of her mouth rose in a faint smile. 

"So it seems," she said and Tywin looked at her for a moment with something like hatred - helplessness always became hatred in him, Jaime knew - and then recovered his poise. He sat down again, beside her.

"I understand how shocked you must have been," he said in a newly gentle voice. "How wounded." He glanced at Jaime and then back at Brienne and his voice gentled further. "I understand the impulse to run away. But." He brought his hand down hard on the table and his voice hardened too. "You took vows. The honourable thing is to see them through."

"I am," Brienne said, after a moment of struggle with her voice. There were tears standing in her eyes. Jaime wanted to touch her and kept his hands strictly to himself. "If there is anything - if I were needed - naturally I would come back. But as things are, I don't believe I violate my vows in leaving. Ser Jaime doesn't think it either."

"Of course he doesn't," Tywin said contemptuously. "All he wants is to be rid of you. He acts on impulse and whim, nothing more. But you - my dear, do _you_ believe you do right to leave?"

Brienne looked at Jaime, a faint frown between her brows.

"Yes," she said slowly. "And so does Ser Jaime. It's right that he let me go. That's why."

Another wave of fury passed over Tywin's face.

"Have you thought of the scandal?" he demanded. "When it becomes known that you have left this house for good?"

"Yes," Brienne said and said no more. It was evident that she thought the scandal an irrelevance. Jaime remembered, suddenly, how his father had stormed and shouted at Cersei and himself all those months ago, how they had stormed and shouted and pleaded back. Nothing had worked on him. Nothing ever did. Yet Brienne was reducing him to an astonishing, impotent fury with her mere silence. He stole a glance at Tyrion, who was looking very intently between the two combatants, his face alight with interest. Yes. Tyrion would be interested by this particular lesson, of course.

"What if," Tywin said into the silence. "You carry a child. My grandchild. What then?"

"Then I would stay," Brienne said at once. "But there is no child." Her voice was very calm, too calm. Jaime remembered suddenly that she had told him she wanted children. Another twist for the knot of guilt in his stomach. 

"You're sure of that?" Tywin asked and she nodded slowly. 

"Very sure," she said. Tywin sat looking at her for another long moment and then shrugged and turned his eyes to Jaime.

"Then I see no alternative," he said. "You had better divorce her. Start again. And _don't_ tell your next wife all the pathetic details of your affairs. Get a child on her as quickly as you can and I won't interfere with your -" his mouth twisted in disgust - "other interests."

"I don't," Jaime said and stopped at the look on his father's face. White fury, uncontained, the worst he had ever seen him. It was an effort to speak. "I don't wish to remarry. It isn't-" he couldn't look at Brienne, though he could feel her intent gaze on him. "It isn't fair."

" _Fair_?" Tywin roared, and Brienne got up quietly from the table. 

"Excuse me," she said. "I must pack."

"I'll come with you," Jaime said hastily, wanting to get away from his father, and Tyrion rose too. They all fled the room, listening to the appalling silence they had left behind them, and then Tyrion reached out for Brienne's hand and kissed it. He was grinning a little wildly, drunkenly.

"You are a remarkable woman," he told her. "That was a privilege to witness. I shall never forget it."

Brienne looked bemused and a little flustered. She took her hand back.

"Thank you?" she said uncertainly. "I was sorry to upset him, of course." Tyrion's grin was joyous and she smiled uncertainly back. "I should - I was going to pack."

Tyrion bowed and let them go. Jaime followed her into their rooms and then put his hands very carefully on her shoulders. She was in tears and struggling not to be and somehow, without intending it, he found he had her in his arms and was murmuring stupid words to her, meaningless sounds, half-syllables. He kissed her forehead and her ear. She calmed, gradually, and pulled herself out of his grip, wiping her eyes and face clumsily, roughly, with her sleeve.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know why -" she stopped as she met his eyes, flushed, and didn't finish the sentence. "I had better pack."

"Yes," he said. "You know it wasn't true, don't you? What my father said? I don't wish to be _rid_ of you."

"You don't have to be kind," she said, in a worn voice. "It isn't necessary. I understand."

"I'm not being kind," Jaime said sharply. "I'm not a kind man, you know that. You've become - dear to me. I shall miss you. It's the truth."

"Thank you," she said, and turned away to pick up a book, which she held rather aimlessly. "I should - will you ask one of the servants to bring down my trunks? Lady Catelyn-" 

There were tears in her voice again and he wanted to grab her, comfort her, force the truth of what she meant to him into her. It was intolerable that she should believe she was a mere inconvenience or incumbrance to him, just because there was no room for her in his loyalty. If it hadn't been for Cersei-

"Please go," she said in a rushed, shaking voice and he knew that going would be the only kind thing to do. He didn't. He put his hands on her again instead, pulled her to him.

"If it wasn't for Cersei," he said against her ear. "I'd love you. You must know that." He kissed her throat, unable to resist the proximity of that soft skin and the flutter of the pulse there, and she tried to twist away and somehow, instead, was in his arms, facing him. He was never quite sure, afterwards, which of them had moved first and how it was that they found themselves on the floor. It was over too quickly for second thoughts. Brienne was gasping, breathless and shocked. He had torn her skirts in his hurry and he thought she had left bruises on his shoulders with the strength of her grip. He stood up, and helped her up, and for a moment they simply stared at each other in despair.

"My trunks," she said at last, in a hoarse voice, and he nodded.

"I'll have them sent down," he said and left. Tyrion was waiting for him on the stairs.

"Well?" he said, as soon as he saw Jaime. 

"Well what?" Jaime said. "She asked me to have her trunks brought down."

"Did she," Tyrion said and ran a swift, knowing eye over Jaime. He became uncomfortably aware of the sweat and dampness that still clung to him, the blood still hot and sluggish in his veins. 

"Don't," he said, his throat suddenly tight as Tyrion opened his mouth and Tyrion shut it again. Tyrion would only tell him he was a fool, an idiot, out of his mind, and he knew that already. The sooner Brienne got away from him the better it would be, for all of them.


	7. Chapter 7

Cersei gave birth to a boy. A son, with a small fuzz of golden hair and an impressively powerful howl. When Cersei put the child in his ams, Jaime almost disgraced himself; his eyes stung, and he had to swallow hard before he could grin carelessly and hand the boy - his son, his _son_ \- back. Cersei hardly met his eyes as he put the baby back in her arms, all her attention on the child. She was glowing, incandescent with love. 

It suited her, Jaime thought -- this unguarded, unsecret, simple overflow of delight in the baby. He watched her as the child - Joffrey, she had said, after some Baratheon relative - gripped her finger and frowned, opened his eyes and closed them again. She was smiling absently, her eyes eager, and all the cool irony of her smile was gone, all its secret tension and contempt. She looked very young. He could hardly recognise her. Had she ever looked at him like that? At anyone? Then Baratheon came in and the cloud passed over her face again. It settled into its familiar lines. She gave up the child to him.

"Pure Lannister, ain't he?" Baratheon said, looking down at the child with an expression more of curiosity than affection. "Golden hair. All very well for a girl, of course, but-" he met Jaime's eyes and gave his explosive horse laugh. "No offence to you, I'm sure."

"None taken," Jaime said, between his teeth, and Baratheon grinned at him and handed the baby carelessly back to Cersei, without looking at her.

"You should be setting up your nursery too, Lannister," he said. "Your wife's gone off to Winterfell, hasn't she? With the Stark women?"

"To Essos," Jaime said neutrally. "With Lady Catelyn Stark, yes."

"Been gone for months, hasn't she?" Baratheon said and shook his head. "Shouldn't allow it. What does she want to gallivant off like that for? I wouldn't permit my wife to do that, I'll tell you." 

He still wasn't looking at Cersei and Jaime didn't dare look at her either. There was a rage boiling in him that he needed to control, contain; one glance at Cersei might bring about the explosion. 

"Brienne wished to see Essos," he said lightly, keeping his eyes on Baratheon's face. "I'd no time to go with her. I gather she's having a splendid time."

Baratheon snorted disapproval.

"I'm sure," he said. "Tell her to come back and do her duty by you." He glanced briefly at Cersei, who was sitting quietly with the baby on her breast, her face dangerously calm. "My wife is up to that at least."

Jaime's hands closed into fists and he had to slowly unclose them, his knuckles aching. He couldn't shake a vivid, appalling image of this man rutting indifferently over Cersei and calling it her duty. He wanted to kill him. 

"I'm glad the boy is healthy," he said. "And Cersei-" he bent over her and kissed her cheek, as tenderly as he dared. "I must go now."

Baratheon gripped his hand roughly and shook it.

"Good of you to come," he said, and Jaime smiled thinly at him and got away, somehow. Once in the street, he found he did not know where he was going. His heart was pounding wildly, some combination of rage and grief and tenderness almost choking him. Had he come here on horseback or on foot? There was somewhere he was expected - someone he had made some promise to - he stumbled, blinded, and heard a shout and a scream, the frightened whinny of a horse, just as his vision cleared and he saw the hooves bearing down on him. 

There was a moment of pure confusion, and then pain. He was sprawled flat on his back in the street. A man was kneeling over him. His mouth was full of blood; he had bitten his tongue. There was an excruciating pain, somewhere, worse than the time he had broken his leg as a child, worse than anything. He could smell blood. He was lying in blood.

"What," he heard himself say, in a thin faint voice that was quite unlike his own. "Am I -"

The man said something, but Jaime missed what it was. When he woke next, it was in his own bed at home and it was dark, a candle flickering, a hallucinatory glimpse of his father's face. A man bent over him. 

"He's awake," he said in a low voice. "That's no good." A bottle at his lips. "Drink this."

Jaime drank - brandy, fiery and soothing - and sank back into darkness. 

The next time he woke, there was something wrong with his hand, something terribly wrong. It itched and ached and burned but he couldn't move it. He turned his head to look and saw white bandages, nothing but bandages. No hand. His wrist ended in white bandages.

"No," he tried to say. It came out a mumble. Brienne's face swam into his line of vision. It was daylight, he saw dully. Light limned her features and long eyelashes, glowed behind her shoulders. She was sitting by his bed, watching him intently.

"My," he said to her. "My hand?"

"They had to amputate," she said gently. She said no more, as he turned his face away from her and wept, but later he woke again and found that she was in the bed beside him and his head was on her shoulder, her hand soothing in his hair.

"Essos," he said after a moment. "I thought-"

"I came back," she said. "Your father told me of the accident."

"You came back?" Jaime said. It was like being visited by a ghost. He had been so sure he would never see her again.

"Go back to sleep," she said, and he wanted to argue - why, why would she ever come back - but exhaustion dragged him back under before he could speak. 

The next time, he was better. He no longer felt detached from his body, weak and absent. The pain was awful, constant, humming under his skin everywhere, his absent hand maddening, but he was himself again. Brienne was there, her back to him, looking out of the window.

"Brienne," he said and she turned swiftly and came to him.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Terrible," he said truthfully. "You did come back, then. I thought I might have dreamt it."

"Your father wrote to me," Brienne said. "Of the accident."

"I see," he said and looked at her. For a long moment, the pleasure of looking at her - at seeing her again, after so long - filled him and he couldn't think beyond it. She looked very faintly tanned, a hint of gold touching her usual pallor, but otherwise unchanged. Her eyes were as blue and earnest as ever and the unhappy twist of her mouth was familiar too.

"So you came back," he said. "My father wrote to you and reminded you that you promised in sickness and in health, I suppose. And you came running back."

"Yes," Brienne said, after a moment, and he felt a wild impulse to throw something, though he was still weak as a cat. That was why she had come back, of course, like a bird on a string. His father had only had to tug at her precious vows and back she trotted.

"So now it's your duty to tend the cripple," he said. "Because you made a _vow_."

She frowned and opened her mouth to speak but he overrode her.

"Go back," he said firmly. "I'm not - you don't owe me _anything_ , Brienne. Least of all this. My father can employ a damned nurse."

"I'm your wife," Brienne said, in a voice so low that he could hardly hear it.

"You're _not_ ," he said and saw her flinch and pale with savage satisfaction. "I never meant my vows. You know that. Why the hell should you be trapped by yours?"

A long silence fell. Brienne sat down in the chair beside his bed, and smoothed her skirt down. She was still pale, but her mouth no longer trembled. 

"Do you want me to go?" she asked, at last. He opened his mouth to speak and she lifted her hand. "Don't tell me if I ought to. Do you _want_ me to go?"

Weak tears stung his eyes. He blinked them away, furious, and she put her big hand on his forehead. Her palm was cool and a little rough. Calm seemed to flow into him from the touch. He closed his eyes.

"No," he admitted.

"Then I'll stay," she said. "Until you're better." 

He said nothing, afraid of what his voice might do. It suddenly became terribly important that she keep her hand where it was. He might even sleep, if her hand was there.

"My vows are mine," he heard her say into the still silence of the room, some time later. He opened his eyes with an effort and was reminded, by the look on her face, of his wedding morning. How curiously stern she had been, then, how solemn, and how little he had understood her. He smiled helplessly, unable to stop himself.

"Did you like Essos?" he asked sleepily, and she said something in reply but he didn't hear what it was.

He dreamed that he was with Brienne in a dark place, heavy with shadows, and Cersei was somewhere ahead; he and Brienne were searching for Cersei and the baby, through dark tunnels, through a cave, and she was not to be found. Panic gripped his throat. Where could she be? What had she done with the child?

"I'm here," Brienne said, beside him, and light bloomed around them as she spoke. He could see Cersei then, far away, the back of her head receding into distance as she walked away. The child was in her arms. He felt a pang of terrible regret. Salt filled his mouth. His phantom hand burned with pain.

"Brienne," he said, and felt the cool rough touch on his forehead.

"I'm here," she said again and he opened his eyes. There was a man bending over his wrist - his stump, he thought with detached horror - applying some sort of salve that burned and soothed in equal measure. 

"Twice a day," he said briskly. "And we can hope to avoid an infection. Are you able to change the bandages yourself, ma'am?"

"Yes," Brienne said and Jaime felt another twinge of anger - there was no reason on earth why she should be changing his bandages - and then gave up. Her vows were hers. She would do as she thought she ought and there was nothing he could do or say or give that would change her mind. 

"Thank you," he said, later, as she held a glass of laudanum to his lips, and she looked startled. He wanted to kiss her when she looked like that, puzzled and a little suspicious. He took the laudanum instead and closed his eyes. She was here till he was better. Then she would go away again. He had no business kissing her. Letting her go was the only thing he had ever done for her. He would need to do it again, that was all, when he was stronger.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the very long delay in updates! The remaining chapters will be quicker.

Pain, Jaime discovered, was supremely dull. The itch and humiliation of his lost hand - the look of disgust on his father's face as he watched Jaime try to scratch out his letters with his left hand - Tyrion's desperate efforts to conceal his pity - none of it was as hellish as the sheer boredom of pain. He could lie in his bed or sit at his desk or stumble about the garden; the pain went on, wherever he was, monotonous. It wasn't unbearable pain any more - the pain itself he could just about bear now - but the tediousness of it was unendurable.

"Tell me about Essos," he said to Brienne as she changed his bandages, desperate for anything that might distract him. She gave him one of her silent frowning looks, and then told him a few things, small things, odd anecdotes and odd sights that had caught her peculiar fancy. An old man walking a donkey. A girl running, with dusty feet and ribbons caught in her hair. A translucent lake through which enormous orange fish swam.

He listened greedily, watching her face as she talked, but soon Essos wasn't enough. He asked about her uncle. About Tarth. About her father and the brother who had died. She was awkward and stilted, as always, and she looked at him warily before each answer, but she gave him what he wanted in the end. He could lie in his bed, or sit at his desk, or walk in the garden and think of Brienne instead of the pain.

Her father, it seemed, had loved her deeply. Her few stories about him, the advice he had given her, the things he had done for her - she had grown up bathed in love, he thought, soaked in it, until her father had died and she had married Jaime. He thought, often, of her still tension when her uncle had brought her to him. That was, he knew now, a bare four months after her father's death. That thought and the memory sent a spear of pain through his chest, tender and sharp, but at least it was a different kind of pain. That was something. He lay still and watched the sunlight move slowly over the ceiling and thought the memory through again, remembered the expression in Brienne's eyes when she had told him she wanted children. His absent hand itched. He shut his eyes. 

"Is there," he heard Brienne's voice. He opened his eyes to find her hesitating over him. "Can I - do you want me to - is there anyone you wish to see?"

He looked blankly at her. What did she mean? She drew in a breath.

"Cersei," she said, her voice a little thinner and higher than usual. "Do you wish to see her?"

"Does she wish to see me?" Jaime inquired and saw the answer in Brienne's attempt at expressionlessness. She was never any good at hiding sympathy.

"She might be afraid," Brienne said tentatively in the silence. "To - she might not know what to expect. I'm sure she wishes very much-"

"No," he said. "She doesn't wish anything of the kind. She loathes ugliness of every sort. She won't care to see me until I'm-" 

He stopped. Better? Would he ever be better? He looked at the pale jaggedly scarred stump of his wrist. It was the ugliest thing imaginable. 

"It's not so bad," Brienne said awkwardly. 

He raised an eyebrow at her.

"No?" he said. 

"No," she said, more firmly. "You look a good deal better than you did, now the fever has passed."

Jaime grimaced. It was pleasant, he supposed, to think he no longer looked or smelled like an actual corpse. But he'd seen his new face in the mirror that Brienne had used to shave him. He looked gaunt and unhealthily pale, and faint lines creased his brow. Nothing golden about him now. 

"You still look," Brienne said and stopped. Her colour rose and she looked away. "You know. Very."

"Very?" he said. It felt as though it had been a year since he had smiled and meant it. Brienne was pink and annoyed, and she bit out the rest of her sentence.

"Very handsome," she said shortly, and then smiled reluctantly as he put his hand to his heart in mock-gratification at the compliment. He wanted, again, to kiss her and pushed the thought away again. Her misplaced sense of duty had brought her back to his side and she was the best thing in his life at present - the only bearable thing - but that was a temporary arrangement. When he became stronger, she must and would leave him again.

Brienne rose to go. 

"Is there anything I can bring you?" she asked.

"No," he said and found himself taking her hand in his good one before he knew what he was about. Her palm was broad and warm, patched with calluses. One kiss. One kiss to the hand. There was no harm in that, surely. Her hand tightened convulsively on his as his lips brushed over her knuckles. Her eyes were dark and wide. He couldn't make himself drop her hand. He was so worn and weak, the pain was so constant, and surely just one - just once - He let her go. He could hear the sound of her breathing, laboured, quick. 

"I should," she said and he nodded and leaned back against the pillows. She didn't go. She stood, looking down at him with those darkened eyes, two raw patches of red over her cheekbones. After a moment, he took her hand again and, this time, kissed the palm. She shivered.

"Brienne," he said. "I don't wish to - you know you owe me nothing."

She nodded dumbly. He ran his thumb over the soft hollow of her palm and watched the almost pained look of longing deepen in her face. She was so young, he reminded himself. He ought not to make the situation harder on her. In a few weeks, he would be better - well enough, at least, to be back on his feet and about his business - and she ought to go.

He dropped her hand. She stood stock still, staring. 

"Go," he said harshly and she shook her head and drew a deep breath. Then she bent over him and he felt her breath tremble out over his lips. Not a kiss, nothing like a kiss, but the nearest attempt at a kiss he'd ever seen her initiate. That was too much. He tilted his head to catch her mouth and found his good hand at the nape of her neck and all his resolutions of self-command crumbled to nothing. The next few moments were feverish, unclear. Her hands shook as she touched him. Somehow, wordlessly, he persuaded her astride him and then he was inside her again and she was gasping his name, over and over; he was faintly aware that his stump was at her waist, resting there, but the sense of amputation was gone. He felt whole, glorious, complete. 

"Oh," she said afterwards, weakly, her face pressed hot against his throat. "Oh gods. Jaime. Your _ribs_. Are you all right?" 

He began to laugh helplessly at the horrified concern in her eyes as she looked him over, her big clumsy hands searching him for injury. 

"Better than all right," he assured her. She was still flushed and dishevelled and he wanted nothing more than to kiss her again. "Never better. You look-"

"Don't," she said quickly. She scrambled clumsily out of the bed and shook out her skirts. "I shouldn't have done that. I apologise."

He shook his head at her, his mood souring at the panic-stricken look in her eyes. 

"Don't be a fool," he said. "It was my idea." 

"I kissed you," she said in a small miserable voice that made feel suddenly savage. After all, for better or worse, she was his wife, wasn't she? She'd taken the damned vows seriously enough to play nursemaid for months, dealing with his body in the most intimate ways imaginable. There was no reason to look so appalled by that single bare attempt at a kiss, by the rushed quarter of an hour they had just spent in each other's arms. 

"It was one kiss, Brienne," he said with forced lightness. "And one very pleasant tumble. There's no need to make a grand tragedy of it."

Brienne went still. He felt a brief jerk of contrition at the pit of his stomach and ignored it. He couldn't let her believe that she was somehow more tied to him by that momentary impulsive interlude, splendid and disastrous as it had been; it was safer for her to believe it had changed nothing, meant nothing. 

"I see," she said. "Yes. Excuse me."

She left. He put his hand over his eyes and tried to catch his breath. His heart was still hammering at the memory of how she had looked, confused and uncertain as he drew her over him, the way her eyes had changed and her mouth had fallen open when she understood what he wanted her to do. The image almost drowned out every other thought. But it was important, still, to realise that he couldn't keep her. Important to find a way to let her go, whatever part of him she took with her when she went. After she left, he would see Cersei and show her that he was still whole, and life would go back to its proper order. He shut his eyes on the desolation of that thought. The things he did for love.


	9. Chapter 9

The prosthetic that his father provided was a thing of beauty. It was smooth buttery leather, elegantly shaped and flesh-coloured, and there was a glove to match the other hand. 

"Can I use it for anything?" Jaime asked, turning his wrist to consider it and the doctor shook his head, giving his father a sidelong look.

"There are more - useful devices, Ser Jaime," he said. "Wonderful things can be done in wood."

"My son will not be seen abroad in a wooden hand," Tywin ground out and the doctor said no more. Jaime looked at the useless discreet leather and said nothing. He didn't feel a wooden hand was a prize worth fighting for. 

"You must learn to help him with it," Tywin said to Brienne, after the doctor had been shown out. She nodded. Jaime straightened in his chair.

"There's nothing to help with," he said. "It's child's play to get it on."

"One-handed?" Tywin said, a faint sneer passing over his face. Jaime thought suddenly of Tyrion, at the way his father had looked at Tyrion in the old days, when he had refused him riding lessons and ordered him out of the room when important personages visited. Jaime did what Tyrion had always done. He smiled as insolently as he could.

"Yes," he said. "I can do a good deal one-handed now. I can certainly manage a few buckles."

"Nevertheless," Tywin said. "You will be glad of your wife to help you."

Jaime looked at Brienne. She looked tired, he thought with a pang, and somehow dulled. Obedient.

"No," he said firmly. "Brienne has her own affairs to see to, now that I'm better."

"Her duty is to you," Tywin said. "Now more than ever."

Brienne looked at him and Jaime felt a thrill of something like lust, something like alarm, as the dull look vanished and the familiar blaze came into her eyes.

" _Your_ duty is to him," she said. "Now more than ever. And all you have done is avert your eyes."

Tywin looked almost too outraged to speak. It didn't matter. He opened his mouth but Brienne would not let him interrupt her.

"He's your son," she said. "He's been in pain. And you meet him only to lecture and complain. Don't you care for him at all?"

In the sudden silence, Jaime found that his eyes were unexpectedly stinging. The rage had flared up in Tywin's face and then faded. He looked at Jaime.

"Of course I care for him," he said in a low voice that startled Jaime more than if he had thrown something. "I only - I wish him to be well."

Jaime could think of nothing to say. He could not remember his father ever before saying he _wished_ anything for his children. It had always been orders. 

"He is well," Brienne said in a gentler voice. "One-handed or not." She looked at Jaime. "Tell him."

"I'm well," Jaime said, realising with a shock that it was true. His stump had healed. The pain was occasional, flickering. He could walk and ride and dress himself and even write a note with his good hand, in a childish but legible scrawl.

Tywin exhaled.

"I'm pleased to hear it," he said and then looked back to Brienne, a heavy frown between his brows. "That doesn't mean he doesn't need you. You're his wife."

"He doesn't need me," Brienne said steadily, not looking at Jaime. The words jarred something deep in him, wrenched in his chest like a physical blow. His father looked at him and Jaime stared back, trying to look impassive.

Tywin scowled from one stubborn face to another and then sighed.

"Have it your own way then," he snapped. He turned on his heel and strode out. Brienne looked uncertainly at the door and then at Jaime. He held out his good hand. She came to him and took it.

"Where will you go?" he asked. "Have you decided?"

She nodded.

"Winterfell," she said. "There's a school there. Lady Catelyn wishes me to take over its management."

"A school," Jaime said. "You'll be good at that."

"Yes," Brienne agreed calmly and he had to smile. _I love her_ , he heard himself think and blinked hard. No. That was nonsense. He hadn't seen Cersei in five months. He was very fond of Brienne, that was true, but his love and loyalty had never been his to give away. 

"Tell me about the school," he said, and she did. She had a theory about education, of course, and the importance of girls' education in particular, and she was just beginning on the wickedness and waste of the apprenticeship system when the door opened and Tyrion entered.

"Cersei is here," he said shortly and Jaime felt a leap of something that he was shocked to realise was dismay. Brienne's hand jerked out of his, almost guiltily. She rose.

"Don't go," Tyrion said, looking at Jaime, and then it was too late for her to go. Cersei had come in.

The sight of her brought tenderness back to Jaime. She had altered her hair. Her face had thinned a little since the last time he had seen her, holding her - their - baby. For a moment, it was as though there was no one else in the room, in the world. He put out his hand and she came across the room and bent over him. Her hair brushed his face and he inhaled its familiar delicious perfume.

"Jaime," she was saying in her rich, exquisite voice. "You _fool_ , Jaime." Her lips brushed his forehead. "Show me."

He held out the false hand and she looked down at it, put her hand out as though to touch it, and then withdrew, shuddering.

"Horrible," she said. "Horrible." She touched his face. "And you look-"

"A good deal better, I'm told," Jaime said through the tightness in his throat. "Now that the fever has passed." 

As he said the words, he glanced involuntarily over her shoulder at Brienne. Cersei turned her head too and he saw Brienne's flinch as their eyes met. He put his hand quickly on Cersei's waist, wanting to distract her, somehow to hide Brienne from her. Cersei didn't turn back to him.

"I suppose I owe you thanks," she said to Brienne. "My father tells me you've taken a deal of trouble for my brother's sake."

Brienne shook her head but said nothing. She had gone rather pale.

"Brienne's been splendid," Jaime said, too heartily. He hated the breezy careless tone of his voice but it was what Cersei needed to hear. "I shall miss her when she goes."

"Goes?" Cersei said and Brienne cleared her throat and spoke at last.

"Yes," she said, a little huskily. "Lady Catelyn Stark has asked me to visit her at Winterfell for a time. I leave next week."

Cersei drew her breath in. Brienne began to redden under her stare.

"I see," Cersei said slowly. She looked down at Jaime and then back to Brienne. "You're running away."

"Cersei," Jaime said, but she ignored him, still studying Brienne, waiting for her to answer. 

"Yes," Brienne said, in a voice so quiet that it was almost a whisper. 

"There's a school," Jaime said swiftly. "At Winterfell. Brienne's going to run it."

"Oh?" Cersei said, and smiled. "How nice. I suppose you must be fond of children."

No one spoke. Tyrion's face was still and watchful. Brienne was so still that Jaime was afraid for her. He tried, again, to distract Cersei.

"How is Joffrey?" he asked and then could have bitten his tongue out as Brienne's gaze flickered and Cersei's smile broadened a little.

"He's wonderful," she said, still keeping her eyes on Brienne. "Growing so fast. And such a beautiful child." Her eyes went to Tyrion by the door and then returned to Brienne. "That makes all the difference, you know. I should have hated to bear an _abnormal_ child."

Brienne had her back to the door. Jaime saw her put her hand to the doorknob and grip it tightly. 

"I should leave you together," she said. "Please excuse me."

Cersei tilted her head a little, curiously.

"But I've hardly ever spoken to you," she said. "Do stay. We ought to know each other better, you know." She looked at Jaime, her eyes glittering, and he saw instantly that her malice was grounded in real anger. She had guessed, somehow, that something lay between him and Brienne and she was furious. "For Jaime's sake. I'm sure he wishes us to be better acquainted."

She ran her eye slowly over Brienne and Jaime looked at her too and saw her with a curious double vision. He saw her through Cersei's eyes as ugly, absurd, an enormous gawky presence; at the same time, he saw the grave loveliness of her eyes, the tender corners of her mouth, the translucent skin of her pale wrists, the softness in her. He couldn't bear Cersei to hurt her and he couldn't think how he could stop her. 

"I _must_ go," Brienne said, and opened the door behind her. She stepped back, away, and Cersei's narrow gaze followed her as she jerked out of the room and turned her back and fled.

"What a very odd woman," Cersei remarked to Tyrion. She smiled teasingly at Jaime, no laughter in her eyes. "What _have_ you being telling her? She seemed to think I would eat her alive."

"He's been telling her the truth," Tyrion said. The false smile dropped from Cersei's mouth. She looked at Jaime.

"I had to," he said. "It wasn't fair."

"Fair?" Cersei repeated incredulously and for a moment, incongruously, he saw a shadow of their father in her face. "Have you lost your mind? You've told that creature _our_ secrets? Put our children, our lives, in _her_ power?"

"You can trust her," Jaime said and saw Cersei whiten with rage. 

"I trust her," he said, more firmly, and her breath came in a kind of hiss.

"You're _sorry_ for her," she said contemptuously. She glanced at Tyrion. "You're always sorry for them. How could you be so weak?"

"I'm not," Jaime said, and stopped. He could not make himself apologise to her for this. He kept seeing the look in Brienne's eyes when Cersei had spoken to her of children.

"It's you," he said suddenly, his voice shaken with unexpected fury. "It's you who are weak, Cersei. You come here after all these months and all you bring with you is -" Her face was so astonished that he almost couldn't finish but anger drove him on. "Is this stupid spite. This jealousy. There's no reason for it."

Cersei's face was almost ugly for a moment with hatred. Her mouth changed, distorted. Jaime felt a kind of appalled terror, like he had fallen from a cliff, like his heart had stopped or his mind had gone. But Cersei _was_ spiteful and he loved her, he did, but he wouldn't have her speaking so to Brienne.

"She leaves in a week," he said. His voice sounded defeated and bitter in his own ears. "You can control yourself for a week, my love."

"I don't understand," Cersei said after a moment. "That creature - are you angry with me because you wished _me_ to run to your bedside? To play nursemaid to your invalid? You know I couldn't have done that."

"I know," Jaime said. "I didn't wish you to." It was true. He would have loathed Cersei to have seen him so weakened and broken, to have seen the disgust in her face as he wept and vomited. He could not have stood it if anyone but Brienne had seen him so - least of all Cersei.

Cersei stared at him a moment longer. 

"I should have guessed," she said. "You've always had a weakness for monsters." 

She stalked past Tyrion and slammed the door behind her. A silence fell. Tyrion made a faint sound, like a whistle under his breath, and then began to laugh.

"Shut up," Jaime said fiercely and Tyrion made him a little mock bow and left the room. Jaime sat for another few minutes in the ringing silence and then went to find Brienne.

She was in the library, staring blindly at a book. Her eyelids were red.

"I'm sorry," Jaime said and her gaze jerked to meet his and then jerked away again. "She was very angry."

"Why?" Brienne asked, with a pained and puzzled look. "I haven't - she doesn't know me."

"She knows me," Jaime replied. "She saw." He hesitated. "She saw how I looked at you. She was jealous."

Brienne gave him an astonished look.

"Jealous?" she repeated incredulously. Her voice was still a little thick with recent tears. "Of _me_?"

"You're - dear to me," he said. "She could tell."

Brienne said nothing. She looked away, towards the window. He came a little closer to her, touched her wrist, breathed her in. 

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I am so sorry, Brienne. For all of this. All of it."

"I," Brienne said and stopped. She looked briefly afraid and then her jaw tightened and she spoke. "Does she - Jaime, does she love you?"

It was like a blow to the heart. He stepped back from her and she looked at him with her clear troubled eyes.

"She didn't seem," she said hesitantly and stopped again at the look in his face. Her question rang in his ears. Cersei loved him. He loved Cersei. Of course that was true. If that wasn't true, nothing was.

"I love her," he said in a creaking terrible voice that sounded like his throat was shredded with pain. "She-" he stopped. He couldn't bring himself to say Cersei loved him. It was suddenly so blindingly obvious that her desire for him and her need of him had nothing whatever to do with love, as Brienne meant the word.

"I love her," he said again, more fiercely. "I will always love her, do you understand?"

Brienne nodded silently. Her lips were white.

"I'm sorry for how she behaved today," he said, finally. "She's not - she isn't used to rivals."

"I'm not her _rival_ ," Brienne said sharply, as if the words were forced out her. "I'm - I don't want - even if I could, I wouldn't try to - to -" 

"I know," Jaime said quickly, hating the tremor in her voice. "I know all you want is to be free of all this. Of us. You deserve to be free."

Brienne shut her eyes. He put his arms clumsily around her and drew her close; for one long moment, she put her forehead down on his shoulder and let him take a little of her weight. Then she drew back, drew a long breath, became composed again. 

"I should begin my packing," she said and he nodded. After she left him, he sat down in a chair before the book she had left open and stared blankly down at the page. It was a chivalric romance, he saw, part of a tale from the time of the Seven Kingdoms. An illustration occupied half the page: a tall woman knight in full armour, sword raised, bright hair floating. He buried his face in his hands and tried to think. All he could see in his mind's eye was Cersei's terrible, furious face and the way Tyrion had looked at him after both women had left the room. If only, he thought. If only. He didn't finish the sentence. All he wanted was another week of rest.


	10. Chapter 10

Brienne's packing was not a particularly involved affair - she owned so few things - but it seemed to take up a good deal of her time. She was always excusing herself to pack. Jaime thought she was probably avoiding him and could hardly blame her, considering everything. A little peace and tranquility was the least she deserved, and he hardly brought her that. But still it made him feel hollow and sad to see so little of her. There were so few days left. She was going away for good. Some selfish part of him wanted to simply follow her from room to room, to force her to look at him and let him hear her voice, but he restrained the impulse and let her go her way. It was the least he could do. 

On the third afternoon of this treatment, Tyrion found him sitting at his writing desk and staring vacantly out of the window, his correspondence untouched. 

"Still moping?" he asked sardonically. Jaime shrugged. Tyrion grimaced.

"The pair of you," he said in exasperated tones. "Your wife's moping in the library, you know. I saw her just now."

Jaime looked away, and Tyrion heaved an exaggerated sigh.

"I'm going riding," he said. "Come with me if you like."

The idea was not particularly appealing but Jaime got up anyway. At least it would give him something to do.

They rode to the park. Jaime watched Tyrion's easy handling of the reins and felt a moment of sentimental pride; he'd been so angry when his father had denied Tyrion riding lessons because he couldn't be seen in public, and it still warmed him to remember the stubborn determination with which Tyrion had set out to teach himself. All those falls and near-misses and bruises. And now here he was, showing off a little for the benefit of any passing pretty face, smug and cocksure and utterly incorrigible. Tyrion glanced over at him and caught Jaime's undoubtedly foolish expression. His smile was wry, a little twisted, but he said nothing.

"I've been thinking of travel," he said a few minutes later, as they drove through the park. He glanced sidelong at Jaime. "East. Beyond Essos."

"What for?" Jaime said, startled, and Tyrion shrugged.

"Adventure," he said. "I must have slept with every whore in King's Landing. Twice. There must be something new to do in the East." 

"Father," Jaime began and then stopped himself. "When do you think to go?"

Tyrion smiled faintly. 

"In a few months," he said. "Bronn tells me there's a ship that sails as far as Mereen that takes passengers. I mean to be on it."

"Oh," Jaime said. He didn't know why he was surprised. Tyrion had always been restless, resentful, had chafed under their father's rule far more than Jaime himself or even Cersei. They had struggled and complained but always obeyed. Tyrion hardly ever obeyed. But it was strange to think he might simply leave King's Landing and the Rock behind. Jaime couldn't imagine it.

"Well," he said at last. "Poor old Mereen."

It was a feeble attempt at banter, but Tyrion grinned at him and his shoulders slackened a little. 

"Pastures new," he said lightly, and they said no more. Jaime didn't ask when and how Tyrion meant to break it to their father. There was no use asking about that. Tyrion would find some way to tell him, probably an outrageous way, and Tywin would react badly whatever he did. 

"Wine," Tyrion said firmly, when they entered the house again. Jaime lifted his eyebrows. It was only three in the afternoon.

" _Wine_ ," Tyrion said, even more firmly, and Jaime shrugged. Why not? There was nothing better to do and Tywin was away at the Rock for the night. They picked up the heavy decanter and a pair of dusty glasses and went to the library, Tyrion swigging heavily from the decanter as they went. Brienne was there, going through a pile of letters, and she started slightly to see them.

"Don't go," Tyrion said and waved the bottle at her. "Have some wine. I have-" he reached into his pocket and produced a small squat goblet from it, with the air of a conjurer doing a trick. "Another glass."

Brienne looked startled.

"I've never," she said a little stiffly. "I don't drink wine."

"Now is the moment to start," Tyrion said firmly and waved the hideous little goblet at her again before setting it down on the table. He filled all three glasses and looked up at her with a gleam of expectant mischief in his eyes. She half-smiled but there was worry in the crease of her forehead and she glanced nervously at Jaime.

"Don't let him bully you," Jaime said, taking up his own glass. It was a good rich wine, strong and old, and its warming influence made it easier to look at Brienne and smile. She looked from him to Tyrion uncertainly and then at her pile of letters. Then she picked up the goblet and took a tentative sip. 

Her wince made Tyrion grin and Jaime buried his own smile in his glass. She looked so solemn.

"To adventure," Tyrion said loudly, sounding half-drunk already, and Jaime rolled his eyes and drank the toast. So did Brienne and her smile was wider this time. Tyrion refilled all the glasses and beamed up at them both.

"To marriage," he said and Brienne flinched so hard that the wine slopped over her hand. Jaime scowled at Tyrion, who only tilted his head curiously at them and drained his own glass. He refilled it.

"To wilful fucking blindness," he said cheerfully and raised his glass to Jaime. "And _true love_." He looked at Brienne.

"That's enough," Jaime said tightly and Tyrion smiled.

"It really isn't," he said carelessly and drank again. "You two. Utter. Dolts." He wiped his mouth. "I'm going out."

He ambled out. Brienne set her glass down rather too hard, jarring it against the table. 

"Excuse me," she said, as she always did when she found herself alone with Jaime now, and he nodded and took the bottle up with him to his own room.

When he woke some hours later, he could hear voices drifting up the stairs from the library. Loud voices, raised in what sounded like a quarrel. He was still drunk, he thought, but the voices sounded real. Women's voices.

He ventured down the stairs. Words became clearer. _For your own sake,_ one of the voices said. That was Catelyn Stark's voice. She sounded more urgent than angry. _You're very young,_ she was saying. _He's not the kind of man-_

"You don't know him," Brienne said, her voice shaky. Jaime paused at the library door, his heart pounding. "He's done his best to treat me well."

"You cannot believe that," Catelyn Stark said furiously. "He treats you like a servant, Brienne. Sending for you when he's ill and sending you away again when he has no more need of you. If you were my daughter-"

"He didn't _send_ for me," Brienne said. "Lord Tywin told me he was dying. I had to see him. He never asked me to." 

There was a pause.

"Brienne," Catelyn Stark said in a gentler voice. "Are you in love with him?"

Jaime put his hand flat on the door. His heart was racing. He didn't know what he wanted her to say, except that he did, of course he did. He waited. She said nothing for a long time. 

"Brienne," the Stark woman said, even more softly, more gently.

"It doesn't matter," Brienne said thickly. She drew what sounded like a difficult breath. "I can't - I won't remarry, Lady Catelyn. A divorce is unnecessary." 

"You think that now," Catelyn said. "How do you know what you will feel in a year's time? In five years? My dear-"

"I know how I will feel in a year's time," Brienne said quietly. "And in five years' time. I know myself. I won't wish to remarry. Ever." She paused and her voice steadied and strengthened a little. "It's very kind of you to wish to help me, Lady Catelyn. I'm very grateful. But it isn't necessary." 

Jaime opened the door. The two women turned their heads swiftly, startled. Brienne went white. 

"Lady Stark," Jaime said and made his politest bow to her. He couldn't look at Brienne just yet. There was a kind of hot confused triumph in him that he couldn't quite understand but it felt as though it would be dangerous to look at her. 

"Ser Jaime," Lady Stark said, very coldly. She inclined her head slightly, and then glanced at Brienne's face. "Brienne, would you like to come home with me tonight? We can send for your things." She looked at Jaime again with her hard unfriendly eyes. "It will be easier for her to begin the journey to Winterfell from my house."

"No," Jaime said, and stopped himself. He was aware of how drunk he was, how reckless he felt. He was dimly aware that some part of this euphoria must be wine. But he couldn't contain it. "I don't want her to go."

"He's drunk," Lady Stark said with disgust. "You had better come with me, Brienne."

"Don't," Jaime said, and made himself look at her. "Please, Brienne. I want you to stay."

Brienne put her hands on the chair in front of her, as if to support herself. She looked wretchedly uncertain.

"Brienne?" Lady Stark said and Brienne shook her head slightly, her eyes still fixed on Jaime.

"I think I had better stay," she said. "I'm perfectly safe," she added, as Lady Stark looked anxiously at her.

"She's perfectly safe," Jaime agreed with a breathless laugh and Lady Stark looked at him again, sharply, and then gave a tiny nod. She went to Brienne and kissed her cheek, rising a little on her toes to do so.

"Good night then, my dear," she said. "Write if you need me." She gave Jaime another stiff unfriendly nod and showed herself out. Brienne was still gripping the chair as if it was the only thing keeping her upright.

"I thought," Jaime said after a moment of staring at her, trying to gather his thoughts. "You don't. You _don't_ want a divorce?"

"You can't remarry," she replied tightly. "And I don't wish to. What would be the point?"

He nodded slowly. His head was spinning but that confused euphoric feeling felt as though it had spread to his fingertips. _I know myself_ , Brienne had said, with utter conviction in her voice. He shut his eyes.

"Excuse me," she said, again, as always, and fled the room. He was too dazed to stop her. He sat down carefully and looked at his false hand, lying stiff on his knee. He was idiotically happy. Brienne's voice. Brienne's look, just now, the trapped wary look that meant she knew what he had heard. There was no reason to be so happy, he thought dimly, but his whole body felt light with it. Drunk, he reminded himself. He was drunk. After a while, he became aware that the door was open and Tyrion was looking blearily at him.

"Moping?" he asked and Jaime shook his head and grinned. No. He might have lost his reason altogether but he certainly wasn't moping.


	11. Chapter 11

He woke with an appalling hangover, his mouth dry and his head pounding. But the memory of Brienne's voice was still crystal clear in his ears and that foolish lightness still filled his chest and belly. If she loved him - his head ached abominably. He put his hand over his eyes. If Brienne loved him. He dragged himself out of bed and went off to bathe. The cold sponge helped, and a glass of water, and he dressed himself with as much care as he could. His heart was thumping erratically, oddly. His hands fumbled as he tied his cravat. If Brienne _loved_ him -

She wasn't at breakfast.

"Packing," Tyrion said dryly, meeting Jaime's questioning gaze, and he hastened upstairs to find her. She was sorting through a pile of books, a faintly harrassed expression on her face.

"Brienne," he said and she glanced fleetingly up at him and nodded cautiously.

"Good morning," he said stupidly. 

"I breakfasted in my room," she said in a slightly rushed voice. "I woke early. I must - there's a good deal to get done."

"Is there?" Jaime asked, still stupid with uncertainty, and she gave him a frowning look.

"Yes," she said. "It's a new school. I will need to supply much of what is needed."

"Yes," he said. "I see. I mean." He stuck. She stopped sorting books into piles and looked at him warily.

"What is it?"

"What if I wanted you to stay?" he asked, in a headlong rush. He was saying everything all wrong. "If I - I asked you to stay?"

"We agreed that you had no right to ask that," Brienne said, after a moment's silence. "You have no right." 

"I know," Jaime said. "I know that."

Brienne nodded stiffly, and turned away to pick up more books. She was keeping her face averted, so she didn't have to meet his eyes.

"Last night," Jaime said slowly. "I had the impression." 

She stopped and scowled at him, suddenly fierce.

"What?" she said. "You had the impression that I would stay here to be -" Her voice caught and then she recovered it. "To be your mistress?"

His mouth fell open.

"You're my wife," he said blankly. 

"And you _love_ your sister," she said. 

"I," he said and stopped, baffled. What was he asking of her? To stay, to be with him always, not to go - to come to his bed when he wanted her - to tell him she loved him - and what else? What of Cersei? He tried to imagine going from Brienne's arms to Cersei's again, to making assignations with Cersei, to holding and kissing her and letting her whisper her poison in his ear and felt suddenly sick. It would be unbearable. All he could think of was her distorted mouth as she had looked at him the other day, her shudder at the sight of his hand, the malevolence of her gaze at Brienne.

"I don't," he stammered. "I wouldn't. Cersei and I. That's over."

Brienne stared at him.

"What do you mean?" she demanded loudly, her voice shaking with fury. "You told me _three days ago_ that you loved her. Would always love her."

"Yes," he said dumbly. "But I didn't mean. I didn't mean that."

Brienne shut her eyes. 

"I don't care," she said, and opened them, giving him a look so fierce that he almost stepped back from it. "I don't care about - I don't wish to know what's between you. I only wish to get away. You swore you would let me. Is that another one of your false promises?"

"No," he said, after a long moment. His head was ringing. "No. Of course you must go, if you wish it."

"I do wish it," Brienne said and he nodded and stumbled from the room. His head throbbed. He tried to remember her voice last night. No divorce, she had said. She would never remarry. Perhaps, he thought grimly, he had only given her a lifelong disgust of marriage and that was all. But he remembered the look in her eyes when he had come into the room - trapped, alarmed - and the quality of the silence that had fallen after Lady Stark had asked if she loved him. No. She was - she felt something, he was sure of it. But. All she wanted was to get away. That had been true too, he knew the ring of it in her voice. She wouldn't lie just to push him away.

Tyrion met him on the stairs. He was carrying a note.

"From our sweet sister," he said, his mouth twisting familiarly. "Here."

Jaime took it and opened it numbly. She needed him, it said. She longed for him. Joffrey was so like him. Robert was a boor. Could he come to her tonight? He put it in his pocket and went back into his own room and was sick into the basin there. His head still felt vile. He took pen and ink and began, his head throbbing, to write to Cersei. 

He kept the note brief in case it fell into her husband's hands. He knew she would understand it. He regretted, he wrote, that he could not visit her as she wished, since his wife was unwell and she would understand that his first loyalty was to her. As her brother, he was always at her service if there was anything she wanted of him as a brother. He underlined the last three words. He would be glad to see the boy when next he could, he added, and sealed the note with a shaking hand.

After he had sent a boy off with it, he was nauseated again. He kept thinking of Cersei as a girl, luminous, hopeful, the long fall of her hair and her careless laughter. All gone. Lost. The woman, his sister, was a different creature altogether. He put his hand over his eyes. After some time, he felt a touch to his shoulder. Brienne. 

"Are you unwell?" she said, a little roughly, frowning down at him. He shook his head.

"No," he said. "Not unwell."

She frowned at the misery in his voice and he flinched from it too. He sounded pathetic, nakedly pleading. He tried to pull himself together.

"Have you finished?" he asked. "Packing, I mean."

"Almost," she answered. Her hand on his shoulder moved to his cheek. "You _look_ unwell."

"I drank too much last night," he said. Her hand dropped. He caught it, unable to let her withdraw from him just yet.

"Brienne," he said. "What if I swear never to see her again? Never to be alone with her?"

Brienne pulled her hand away.

"What are you _doing_?" she said. "Why would you say such things?"

"I want you to stay," he said rapidly. "I love you. I can't do without you."

"I don't," Brienne said blankly. "Why?"

He stared at her.

"What do you mean, why?" he said, his voice rising. "I love you."

"You love _her_ ," she said. "Don't - don't lie to me. I know you're f-fond of me and you wish me to stay but it's cruel to lie." 

"I'm not," he said. "Brienne, I - I loved Cersei before I was eleven. I've always. I never thought about it, what it meant, what it was. Until you."

"I don't understand," she said and he drew a deep breath.

"I don't _love_ Cersei," he said, hearing himself say the words with a kind of shock of amazement. "I care for her, I always will. I needed her, for a long time. I believed I needed her." He swallowed. He felt oddly detached from himself, light, saying these incredible things that were somehow, incredibly, true. "I've never loved anyone as I love you."

"You're fond of me," Brienne said desperately. "I'm easy to be with. Dear to you, as you keep saying." Her mouth twisted. "That isn't - you don't -" She heaved a breath. 

"When I thought you might die," she said, in a low shaking voice. "I felt -" she stopped. The look in her eyes was wild, desolate, and he felt the unexpected lightness expand in his chest again. "You don't feel as I do. It isn't fair to pretend you do."

"How do you know I don't?" he asked. He took her hand back and brought it to his lips. "Why are you so sure that I don't?"

"You _can't_ ," she burst out. "You couldn't." Another deep breath. " _Look_ at me."

There it was. He stood up and pulled her closer.

"I am," he said gently. He took his hand from hers and touched her soft thin hair. Traced down the line of her jaw. Her lips. 

"Stop it," she said against the brush of his thumb. "I don't believe you. Stop."

"I want to kiss you," he said. "I always want to kiss you, Brienne."

"You _don't_ ," she said vehemently, like a child, but she gave in with a kind of gasp when he did kiss her. For a long sweet moment, her body relaxed utterly against his and he felt the sigh that escaped her in his own chest. Then she stiffened again and tried to jerk back out of his grasp.

"I'll stay if you tell me why," she said, quickly, desperately. "Just tell me the truth, and I'll stay. Even if." She gulped. "If it's that your sister no longer wants - or -"

He almost groaned aloud. Then he paused. Perhaps this was the only way.

"The truth," he said slowly and deliberately, and paused. "Do you promise? You'll stay if I tell you why?"

She nodded. The look on her face was familiar - still, enduring, waiting for a blow. He touched her clenched jaw and ran his thumb along her cheek.

"I can't do without you," he said. "I want you. More than I've ever wanted anyone. I love you. More than I've ever loved anyone." 

She looked frozen, unchanging, still waiting for some trick or secret, some reason why it was all a trap. 

"When I married you," he said. "I wasn't. I didn't know what I was doing. I know what I'm doing now. I love you. Stay with me."

"I," she said and stopped. She seemed to suddenly have nothing to say. Her rigid expression crumbled into uncertainty. He waited, holding his breath, while she studied him. "All right." 

He smiled helplessly.

"All right?" he said, incredulously. "That's your answer?"

She nodded and then smiled a sudden wide smile, so brilliant that it took his breath away. He laughed and pulled her close and kissed again. All right. As vows went, it would do.


End file.
